The hard drive is filling up fast, and it’s come time to get some addition storage. I basically need something to store my ever-growing sound library but it would be nice to record to it if need be. I thought I’d see what n-Track users use. What are the pros and cons of external and internal hard drives? Which is more reliable?
-Phryg
I can’t tell you all the pro’s & con’s but unless I specifically hard requirements for an external drive, I’d always go with the internal drive for speed, ease of use, desk space, etc., etc.
- CC
No problems here using an external FireWire drive when I’m working with my laptop.
120 gig 7200 RPM 8Mb cache Western Digital.
A hard drive is a hard drive is a hard drive. Granted their are different flavors (speed, size, cache, manufacturer, etc.).
The key points would be dependability and transfer rate.
Trusted manufacturers offer trusted dependability.
Transfer rates come from the interface (SATA, SCSI, IDE ATA, FireWire and USB 2.0 to name the main ones).
Depending on what options you have available would dictate your selection of connectivity.
A slick setup for a desktop would be either SATA or IDE drives mounted in removable trays. Or you can just mount it in the box and be done with it.
There are many a DAW users that have great success with external FW or USB 2.0 drives. Myself included.
External drives make for an easy way of transporting data from one machine to the next. Or if you fill it up with archived projects, you can pack it away on a shelf and plug in a new one. Same goes for removable tray mounted drives.
Food for thought.
-Ken
-Edit to add- …
The internal drives will get the Pro’s in transfer rates and Con’s in transportability.
The external drives are the opposite, yet even with the slower transfer rate of FireWire drives … I have yet for it to be the bottleneck of any project.